Cuba - 2005
Havana, a trip to the past
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Cuba.
One of my first international trips, I visited Cuba in 2005 as part of a workshop. I was very young. Having read a lot about Cuba, both on history books and fiction, I had created an image of what a country that lived so isolated from the rest of the world would look like. I had no idea of how it would impact me forever.
All photos taken in 35mm slides.
“Cuba may be the only place in the world where you can be yourself and more than yourself at the same time.” — Pedro Juan Gutiérrez, Dirty Havana Trilogy
Insider their home.
Kind eyes, welcoming smile. That’s usually how I was received, even when prying into their homes.
It was hard to understand what I saw. Poverty, happiness, curiosity, survival, lots of music and culture, madness, unemployment, emptiness and fulfillment…
Malecón. Havana.
It is where everything happens. Tourists walk alongside the shores, families hang out together, children jump into the water, youth share hidden drinks, couples go out for dates, lonely people play music, thinking about their loved or lost ones. A place to be melancholic and hopeful, all at once.
This part of Central Havana is exactly how I imagined the writer Pedro Juan Gutiérrez’s scenarios. If you haven’t read him, please do yourself this favor.
He is often called the master of “Cuban dirty realism.” He describes the smell of the streets, the violence, the energy in a gritty, sarcastic and pessimistic literature. The way I like it. The only way it could be.